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KARACOOKS
KARACOOKS
Good Food · Honest History · Strong Opinions
  • Flaky buttermilk biscuits in a striped towel-lined basket, including a braided scrap knot

    Meemaw’s Buttermilk Biscuits

    ByKara June 23June 24 Recipes, Personal

    Every Sunday morning, Zach makes Meemaw’s biscuits. Light, flaky, rich with butter, tender, and just about perfect. We eat them with scrambled eggs and thick-cut bacon, sometimes with sausage gravy when we’re feeling indulgent, sometimes with nothing but butter and strawberry jelly when we want simple. Every once in a while he makes them for…

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  • Dramatic clouds and breaking light over the Downeast Maine coast at Acadia

    Maine: A Love Story – Part 2

    ByKara June 21June 20 Travel, Personal

    The gothic half of a Maine trip: a Boston Spenser pilgrimage, a tropical storm, the easternmost point, a Bar Harbor ghost tour, and Stephen King’s gate.

    Read More Maine: A Love Story – Part 2Continue

  • A green anole with its mouth open and it's tongue sticking out, resting on the rim of a terracotta mint pot in the garden

    Friday Roundup #28

    ByKara June 19June 20 Friday Roundup, Personal

    A steamy Georgia-summer roundup: dirty spaghetti on the must-try list, Good Culture cottage cheese, the new Nora Roberts, cherry plums, and Kamado-grilled lunches.

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  • Deck of a coastal Maine cottage with rocking chairs overlooking the bay

    Maine: A Love Story – Part 1

    ByKara June 14June 14 Travel, Personal

    Every fall, Zach and I take a week and go somewhere. Late September, early October, right before the holiday season turns into a demolition derby. We started it in 2019 and it has become the most protected week on our calendar. Tucson one year. Jekyll and Cumberland Island another. A big loop through Las Vegas…

    Read More Maine: A Love Story – Part 1Continue

  • The progressive pride flag with a KaraCooks logo at the bottom right.

    Why It’s First on the List

    ByKara June 6June 7 Food & Politics, Personal

    It’s Pride, and this Saturday I’m walking the Roswell Pride Walk. So before the month runs out on a calendar full of fruit salad and steak, here’s the thing I actually believe: LGBTQ+ equality is line one of what I stand for, and it isn’t an abstraction. It has names, and they eat at my table.

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  • A large glass bowl of Carol's potato salad, pale gold with flecks of celery and onion, dusted with paprika-orange Lawry's Seasoned Salt across the top.

    Carol’s Potato Salad

    ByKara June 2June 2 Recipes, Personal

    Carol’s potato salad is mayo, mustard, yellow onion, celery, and dill relish dressed on hot potatoes. No secrets. Just muscle memory and good timing.

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  • The karacooks logo: a hand-drawn pepper cross-section in forest green, burgundy, and gold, with three seed chambers arranged around a burgundy center.

    A Logo, a Pepper, and a Year of Trying to Look Like Myself

    ByKara May 17May 16 Behind the Blog, Personal

    So I’ve been redesigning the blog. I’ll spare y’all the full backstage tour, but if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ve watched me cycle through enough visual identities to fill a small museum. Or possibly a cautionary tale. There was the cursive script phase, when the header looked like a wedding…

    Read More A Logo, a Pepper, and a Year of Trying to Look Like MyselfContinue

  • a square pitcher of sun tea, brewing on the front door step. There is purple catmint and a cream rosebush in the background. The tea is a light golden color with green tags hanging out of the pitcher.

    What Cinco de Mayo Actually Is (and Why I Still Make Enchiladas)

    ByKara May 3May 16 Food & Politics, Personal

    I did not grow up observing Cinco de Mayo. Nobody in my Texas family did. It wasn’t a holiday in the way Christmas or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July was a holiday; it was a date on the calendar that occasionally meant something at school and otherwise didn’t. In college it became an…

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  • Close-up of Remy's face, a black pit bull, with both brown eyes looking up at the camera and Zach blurred on the couch behind him

    Life with a Pibble: Meet Remy

    ByKara March 29May 24 Personal

    I’m writing this with a 71-pound pit bull pressed against my side on the sofa. Full velcro-dog mode. He’s dreaming, twitching, and making those adorable snorting sounds that pit bulls do. His name is Remy, and he is categorically the least threatening creature on the planet. How We Got Remy We adopted Remy on February…

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  • A grove of tall pine trees, with a few fallen over, brown leaf and needle-strewn ground, and a scattering of small green undergrowth plants.

    Being Authentic

    ByKara February 8May 16 Food & Politics, Personal

    This is the forested area behind our house. It’s the part of our property that the creek runs through. It’s where I go when I need peace and calm and to escape from the world for a little bit. If you’ve been reading this blog since I restarted it this month, you’ve noticed something: this…

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  • A triptych of images from our dinner at the optimist. From left to right: whole shrimp in butter sauce over grilled bread, a seafood platter with oysters, salmon crudo, crab salad, and shrimp cocktail, and a plate with 2 butter drenched rolls sprinkled with flaky salt.

    The Optimist: The Best Seafood in Atlanta

    ByKara February 1May 16 Personal, Restaurant Reviews

    In July 2019, I took Zach to The Optimist for his birthday. It was our first time there, and I’m just going to say it up front: it’s the best seafood we’ve had anywhere. Better than St. Simons. Better than the coast. Better than a lot of places we’ve eaten on our travels. The Optimist…

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  • Here We F****** Are Again

    Here We F****** Are Again

    ByKara January 25May 16 Food & Politics, Personal

    I had a whole other post planned for today. A fun one. One talking about our favorite seafood restaurant in Atlanta. It was written, scheduled, and ready to go. And yesterday morning cos-playing ICE thugs murdered another American citizen. This time a man. A nurse. 37 years old. A good man. His parents told him…

    Read More Here We F****** Are AgainContinue

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KaraCooks
Good Food · Honest History · Strong Opinions

KaraCooks is written, cooked, photographed, and gardened by one person in Johns Creek, Georgia.

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